The Internet has been very useful to many people as it is a great source of information and entertainment. There are more and more people on the Internet each day, and this also includes government officials such as presidents. Even presidents surf the Web, and why would they not do it? After all, the Internet can definitely be beneficial to them in many ways. The Internet allows them to have contact with regular citizens, and it is an important part of being a president. Based on some interviews I deducted that there are two main things presidents do on the Web:
� Read the news. Obviously there is an abundance of high quality news sites on the Internet. A president might have even more accurate sources of information, but it does not mean that he never reads news online.
� Read political suggestions and advice given by surfers. While most presidents might not do that, staying in contact with the public is very important.
I think that presidents are not that much different from us as they also take advantage out of modern technology. While they are usually very busy I am sure that sometimes they might take some time to simply visit their favorite website.
When it comes to blogging, there are some decisions to be made related to our domain names. First of all, we have to decide where we want to host our website. For example, if we decide to host our site on Blogspot, then our domain name will look like this: domain.blogspot.com. On the other hand, if we choose a custom domain, then we can completely customize our domain name. We will also not be forced to use �blogspot�, �wordpress�, or any other word in our blog address. Custom domain cost money, but some sites can teach you how to have an extra income to cover the costs of your domains.
Being hosted on a custom domain name is generally considered to be a better solution, but why are there still many successful blogs that are hosted on Blogspot? I believe that they did not switch to a custom domain name, because they did not want to lose their domain age and back links. If that happened, this would mean that from a SEO perspective they would have to start from the beginning. Since accumulating links can take a long time, changing a domain is not an easy decision to make.
Another aspect to consider may be growing registration fees. The registration fees for domain names are generally getting higher, as VeriSign quite often raises the prices. VeriSign raised the prices at least two times since 2006, so some analysts are getting alarmed by this trend. I think that the prices are still relatively low, as the cost of hosting is the major expense for webmasters. This especially applies to those with a lot of traffic and downloadable resources such as videos, audio, and software. VerisSign claims that the .com and .net infrastructures are continually being fortified against more sophisticated cyberattacks, so let us hope that this company will spend the extra money it is receiving on security.
The decision whether to switch to a custom domain will ultimately be up to you, so consider all facts before making a final decision.
If you like implementing videos on your blog, you might be interested in the feature I am going to discuss. Some time ago Adsense introduced a feature called video units that allows its users to embed a YouTube video on one�s blog. This allows to make money from ads being displayed along with the videos.
If the videos you embedded on your website are relevant to the topic of your blog, this feature will allow you to make some extra cash, while at the same time not distract your visitors from other content. You can be always sure that the ads displayed will be relevant to the video and they will be non-intrusive. Additionally, you will be able to blend your YouTube videos into your blog by customizing the color and layout, as well as choosing from a few different player sizes.
Of course, whether you will really benefit from videos on your blog depends on your blog’s niche. Some blogs can greatly benefit from YouTube videos like, for example, entertainment blogs. It might not be that easy to find suitable videos for a niche like blogging. However, since there are millions of videos on YouTube, I am sure that every webmaster will be able to find some videos worth embedding on his blog. There are many videos that can either teach something valuable or simply video that are entertaining. Whenever you implement a video on your blog make sure that your website loads quite fast. Many webmasters make a mistake of adding to many elements to their blog that take too long to load.
A lot of bloggers struggle to post on a daily basis on their blog. However, you do not need to post on a daily basis to be a successful blogger. What is important is that you should post on a regular basis, and that you should find your blogging rhythm. Here are a few tips which should guide you in the right direction:
-Consider your niche and type of blog. How often are your competitors posting? The ideal posting frequency might be once per week or even a few times per day. The posting frequency might depend on your niche. If you are a news blogs then you might need to post many posts per day.
-Be consistent. Try to establish a consistent posting rhythm, so that your readers will know when to anticipate your next post. You may decide, for example, to post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
-Start out slow. Make sure you do not put unnecessary burden on yourself. It might take some time before you will get used to writing posts every day. Once you will be more experienced it will be a lot easier for you to write posts.
-Monitor your readerships response. Do your visitors enjoy your current posting frequency? Look for any signs you might not be posting often enough. On the other hand, maybe you are posting too much and it is hard for most of your readers to keep up?
You will have to make the decision yourself, so take into account all of the aspects.
From time to time, I like visiting a particular blog that I could describe as very successful. This blog mainly discusses the topic of blogging. What I found interesting is that in one of his articles he listed all of the things he has never done to promote his blog. These included no feedcount, no guest blogging, no guest posts on blog, no contests, no paid advertising, no incentives (this means no eBooks, free reviews, or gifts of any sort), no Digg frontpages, and no frequent posting. This was a very surprising information as it shows that he did not use many different methods to promote his blog, yet he has a lot of visitors. I still wonder however how he achieved such a success. It seems that there is no consensus on how to achieve a large number of visitors. However, there are some things you can work on to increase the number of visitors. I believe that organizing and maintaining a blog is not an easy task, and that is why I want to give you some SEO advice:
-Optimize your blog properly. Your blog should be optimized first for users, then for search engines, and later possibly for monetizing it. My advice is that you look for a template that will have a white background.
-Change your permalinks so that they look as follows: /%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/. This will make your permalinks more search engine friendly, and visitors searching for particular keywords will be directed to your post.
-Manage RSS feeds. RSS is a very good way to help your content read the data from your blog. I personally am quite familiar with FeedBurner.com; however, if you want you can also try OnlyWire.com and Technorati.com. To let the search engines know that you posted a message on your blog, use such free services like PingOMatic.com and Pingoat.com.
Every webmaster knows the importance of link building. Without at least a few links linking to the website, it is doomed to fail. The reason links from other websites are so important is that they can affect the website’s pager rank, traffic, as well as many other statistics. I have always thought that link building services are services that can help webmasters make their websites more popular. Even if I try to make my website popular on my own, I know that I can additionally ask somebody else to help me make it even more popular. I also want to always make sure that links pointing to my blog are quality links that will not do more harm than good.
Not everyone is a SEO expert, but many people have some knowledge about it. The truth is, however, that basic knowledge of SEO is not enough to make every website successful. A person might have some idea about SEO, but it might not be enough to make the wisest decisions concerning the SEO of a website. SEO is a complicated topic. A lot has been written about it in the past. Many people decide to dedicate numerous pages to this important knowledge. Even if you are not a SEO expert, you can always benefit from the knowledge of somebody who has a lot of experience in this field.
Whenever someone sends you an attachment via email you should be careful to make sure you will not get infected by a virus. It is easy to click and open a file with a virus, and if you do not have proper antivirus protection, then your computer will be infected. You may lose sensitive data because of that. You might even be forced to format your hard drive. One way to protect yourself from potential viruses is to know which file types are safe to open and which are not. Here is a short list:
� .doc, .xls, .pub, .ppt are files which can be opened by Microsoft Office. It is unlikely for any of them to contain a virus.
� .htm, .html, .php .jpg, .png, .gif are files that are very popular on the Internet as they are responsible for pages and for displaying images. They will probably not contain viruses as well.
� .mov, .avi or .mpg are video files that are relatively safe when it comes to virus infections; however, some people reported that they can contain spyware. Having a good firewall program should protect you.
� .exe is an executive file type, which means that it can be a software program, but it also may be a virus. This is the file type that is the most likely to contain a virus.
The key principle is to be careful, and do not open any files from people that you do not trust. Remember that .exe is the most dangerous file type. Take proper precautions, and do not let viruses harm your computer.
Many passwords nowadays are being hacked for various reasons. Usually, this is due to the inability of choosing a good password. If you want to create a good password, you may wish to follow a few simple tips. If you do so, the probability of your password getting hacked will drop dramatically. Here are a few tips on how to create a password that will be a lot harder to crack:
1. Avoid first names and surnames.
2. Avoid things that might be easily associated with you like your hobbies, phone numbers etc.
3. Avoid common words in any language whether it be English or Chinese.
4. Use a combination of letters and numbers. Try to mix them.
5. Create a password that you can remember so that you will not have to write it anywhere.
6. Make your password quite long. The longer it is, the better.
7. Do not use keyboard sequences like, for example, “qwerty”.
8. Plan on changing your password from time to time.
9. If possible, have one password that you will use for all your accounts in different places. That will make it easy for you to remember all of your passwords.
I am certain that all of the above points are quite logical. Just use common sense when creating a password and you should be fine.
Did you know that you can post blog entries by email? If you have a mobile phone that enables you to send email messages to your account, then you can also use it to post your messages on your blog remotely. Even if this is just a standard cellular phone, it will still work, but you will be somehow limited. Whenever you are on holidays and think that there is something that you would like to add to your post or write a new one, you can easily do so. You will be limited on how long your post will be as usually in one SMS you will be able to send maximum 2-3, maybe 4 sentences. You can always send a few messages that will make a longer post as a whole, but you will need to edit them into one larger post.
Another way you can utilize your email is to take advantage out of the very useful option to receive RSS by email. Feedburner allows it, and since most people use emails, it is very convenient because your readers will not need to download any other programs including RSS readers. I also want to give you a hint how to properly count your RSS by email subscriber amount. I am talking about a situation where a person subscribes to your feed, but after some time does not check your messages anymore. The question is how can you estimate how many subscribers are really active and reading your posts. The answer is surprisingly short, as Feedburner has an integrated tracking image in all emails, which means that if the subscriber does not open the email by a set amount of time, the subscriber will be removed from the RSS count. As you see, emails can help you in managing your blog.